We also learned something else about Jamaica: no matter where you go, no matter how remote or desolate the place might seem, you will have about eight minutes of "alone time," before a local will appear, seemingly out of nowhere, to try to sell you something. A tour, a bracelet, a boat ride, a snorkeling trip, and if all else fails, a giant bag of weed.
...but two! But, that's ok - by this point Meredith and I had decided to roll with the punches and actually got to meet and hang out with a bunch of locals which isn't usually the case you travel. Besides...
On the way back into the shallows, we saw this really big, beautiful spotted eel. Which I learned, after being stopped from reaching down to touch it, was an ELECTRIC EEL!
But it only took, yep, you guessed it, about 8 minutes for a local to appear out of the forest and offer us all sorts of services. This time, we took him up on his offer to have his friend take us out on a boat tour of the coast and the Blue Lagoon. We headed to eat lunch and set up a time to meet his friend with the boat after we'd eaten.
The place had been recently decimated by a hurricane and the whole surrounding town was pretty much empty...well, empty except for the 50 people who saw our lone car arriving and each took turns pitching us to get our hair braided, buy beads/bracelets and/or weed.
The guy who gave us the tour was the nicest man ever. Here he is showing us raw ackee, the national fruit. Ackee looks a lot like an orange pepper - except that it's filled with a poisonous gas (I swear to god I'm not making this up). When it gets ripe, the fruit splits open and the gas escapes making it safe for human consumption.
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